In the early 1960’s, broadcast journalist Mike Wallace donated 65 recorded interviews made in 1957-58 from his show The Mike Wallace Interview to the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. The bulk of these were 16mm kinescope film recordings, some of the earliest recordings of live television that were possible, and that survive today. Many of these have not been seen for over 50 years, and they represent a unique window into a turbulent time of American, and world history.
From Senators to strippers, Ku Klux Klansmen to Nobel Prize winners, Mike Wallace has interviewed them all, and we invite you to view The Mike Wallace Interview.

Featured segment

WALLACE: But you do admit that over the past year in particular Mr. Nixon seems to have changed, possibly to have grown with the times?

Eldon Edwards, Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, talks to Wallace about the South's attitude toward the KKK, the Klan's membership, segregation, the NAACP, communism, and J. Edgar Hoover.
NOTE: This interview contains language that may be offensive to some people.

Dr. Ralph Lapp, a nuclear physicist who helped develop the atomic bomb and who gave up research to write and lecture against further nuclear testing, talks to Wallace about the Atomic Energy Commission, cancer, the social responsibility of scientists, the Manhattan project, Hiroshima, and religion.

Mary Margaret McBride, the "First Lady of Radio," pioneered radio journalism with more than 30,000 interviews over more than 20 years. She talks to Wallace about career versus family, motherhood, religion, television, and bikini bathing suits.

Dagmar, statuesque comedienne, one of the first major female stars on television, famous for her "dumb blonde" persona, talks to Wallace about her career, psychoanalysis, tranquilizers, and television.

This interview was recorded in two parts. Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the greatest architects of the 20th century, talks to Wallace about religion, war, mercy killing, art, critics, his mile-high skyscraper, America's youth, sex, morality, politics, nature, and death.
Thanks to the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for their cooperation in presenting this interview here. This interview is available on home video through the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation.

Eddie Arcaro, the most celebrated jockey in America, winner of 5 Kentucky Derbys and 22 million dollars in purses over a 25-year career, talks with Wallace about horse racing, gambling, drugging of horses, and the pressure to win.

Orval Faubus, governor of Arkansas, talks to Wallace from the Governor's mansion in Little Rock during his standoff with the Federal Government over the integration of Little Rock Central High School. Faubus had called in the National Guard to bar the African-American students from the school and had met the day before this interview with President Eisenhower in an effort to resolve the conflict.

Malcolm Muggeridge, former editor of Punch Magazine and one of England's leading intellectuals, talks to Wallace about his article in The Saturday Evening Post in which he created an international furor by criticizing Queen Elizabeth.

Carmen Basilio, middle weight boxing champion of the world, had recently won his crown after a savage fight with Sugar Ray Robinson. Basilio talks to Wallace about Robinson, whether boxing should be outlawed due to its brutality, and organized crime's influence on boxing.

Kirk Douglas, a film star who had recently completed two films, Paths of Glory and The Vikings, talks to Wallace about acting, fame, the charge that Hollywood films misrepresent America abroad, Nazis, Communists, and European versus American women.

Leonard Ross, a 12-year-old California school boy who won a total of $164,000 on the game shows The Big Surprise and The Sixty-Four Thousand Dollar Challenge, talks to Wallace about the effects of quiz shows on children, school, politics, eggheads, spanking, mothers, and Santa Claus.

Alexander de Seversky, Russian-born World War I flying ace who served as a consultant to the U.S. government and helped revolutionize aerial warfare in World War II, talks to Wallace about the United States military, the Soviet military, and the possibility of nuclear war.

In this special telecast from the American Nobel Anniversary Committee Dinner and Forum at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, Dr. Linus Pauling, Pearl S. Buck, Clarence Pickett, and Sir John Boyd Orr talk about peace in a world threatened by war.

Rudy Vallee, the American singer, bandleader, and actor, first of the great "crooners," and arguably the first mass media pop star, talks to Wallace about his career, his opinions about his fans, Hollywood, his friends, and his reputation for stinginess.

Former Marine Air Corps Major Donald Keyhoe, director of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, conducted an investigation of the existence of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). Keyhoe talks to Wallace about the United States military, reports of UFO sightings, the various theories explaining UFOs, government cover-ups, and the possibility of interplanetary war.

One of the most successful and controversial figures in show business and Broadway lyricist for such classics as Oklahoma!, The King and I, and South Pacific, Oscar Hammerstein II talks to Wallace about sentimentality, racism, religion, and politics.

Peter Ustinov, actor, playwright, director, and novelist, talks to Wallace about a variety of subjects including the monarchy versus the presidency, death, education, sex, money, advertising, and fame.

Lillian Roth, the singer whose brutally frank autobiography I'll Cry Tomorrow was made into an Academy Award-winning film with Susan Hayward, talks to Wallace about her battle with alcoholism, religion, psychoanalysis, Alcoholics Anonymous, and her new book, Beyond My Worth.

As Israel celebrates its tenth anniversary, Abba Eban, Israel's ambassador to the United States, talks to Wallace about Arab nations, the Arab refugee problem, Egypt's President Nasser, Jews in America, and the charge that Israel threatens world peace with a policy of territorial expansion.

Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, vice president of Union Theological Seminary in New York, on leave to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and one of the most important and challenging religious thinkers in the world, talks to Wallace about the separation between church and state, Catholicism, Protestantism, anti-Semitism, communism, and nuclear war.

William Douglas, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, talks with Wallace about freedom of expression and the freedom to exchange ideas. In Douglas's book, The Right of the People, he wrote, "In recent years, as we have denounced the loss of liberties abroad we have witnessed its decline here in America."

Harry Ashmore, executive editor of the Arkansas Gazette in Little Rock and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for his forceful editorials denouncing the racist mobs during the desegregation conflict in Little Rock's high school, talks to Wallace about the integrity of journalists, the influence of advertisers and the government on the press, techniques of interviewing, and the desegregation of Little Rock High School.

Charles Percy, president of Bell & Howell, talks to Wallace about the role of government in the economic system, about private enterprise's involvement in public services, tax reform, and the soviet economic system.

Dr. Henry Kissinger, Associate Director of the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University, talks to Wallace about the United States' foreign and military policies, limited nuclear war, the Soviet Union, Algeria, the Middle East, and Republicans, including Richard Nixon.

Dr. Henry Wriston, president of the Council on Foreign Relations and former president of Brown University, talks to Wallace about the Middle East crisis, United States foreign policy, and the threat of nuclear war.

James McBride Dabbs, South Carolinian, plantation owner, elder in the Presbyterian Church, president of the Southern Regional Council, and author of The Southern Heritage, talks to Wallace about the psychological burden of the Southerner, segregation, school integration, and the consequences of the Civil War.

Mortimer Adler, president of the Institute for Philosophical Research, former professor of the philosophy of law at the University of Chicago, and author of The Idea of Freedom, talks to Wallace about conceptions of freedom, capitalism, socialism, and the American worker.

Arthur Larson, who resigned from the Eisenhower administration after having served as Undersecretary of Labor, Head of the United States Information Agency, and Special Assistant to the president, talks to Wallace about Eisenhower, the administration's social philosophy, politics, and the American way of life.